I Wish, I Wish
by PhoenixDragonDreamer
Summary: Even if there was the remotest possibility that he was, indeed, Sherlock (and not a random figment of madness come to solid, breathing life), it still wasn't Sherlock. Too much time had passed.
1. Chapter 1

**Warnings:** No Spoilers, Dark!Fic, Post TRF, PTSD, Mentions of Suicide/Suicidal Tendencies, Mentions of Canonical Character Death, Hallucinations, Psychological Horror  
**A/N:** This was actually written in June 2012. It was a time when I was dabbling in Sherlock Fandom (though, admittedly, I still am) and was massively unsure of my niche within it. I am still (sadly) unsure, but as I was going through my WIP folder, I came across this little series that 'might' and thought 'Well, that's actually not half bad.' The parts were written on these dates respectively: Part 1 - June 23; Part 2 - June 24; Part 3 - June 25. I know I posted them but (as I've said), the posting was likely haphazard at best and began and ended here at Livejournal; which seems (in my mind) to be doing this fiction a bit of a disservice. I still am not sure if this little series should be continued. So far, it has left me where it has left me and seems satisified to do so. And where it has left me is (hopefully) suspenseful, but not in a cliffhangar way. In the end, this might be finished. But even if not, I felt not posting it properly was Doing It Wrong. In the end, that (my dear readers) is entirely up to you. I certainly hope you enjoy. As always, unbeta'd fic is unbeta'd - so any roughness or horridness I ask you to kindly overlook.  
**A/N 2:** For my darling and oh, so sweet Tori and also for my patient, long-suffering Fic-Wife, LoneWytch  
**Disclaimer(s): **_**I do not own the brilliant Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mycroft Holmes or other characters therein. That honor goes to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the BBC and the fantastic S. Moffat and M. Gatiss. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about...**_

* * *

**Yesterday, Upon the Stair**

* * *

There were a lot of things that passed through his head, when he saw_ that face_ on the other side of the door. Quite a few things. And while some of them were quite pleasant, more than a few were not. Things like: _you, you __machine_ and _keep your eyes fixed on me_ and _it's just a trick, just a magic trick_.

He thought these things in less time than it took to blink. He thought these things and even managed to squeeze in an extra thought, shoving it in to make room (_I wonder if this was what it was like for him_) - because it had to be in the past tense. Sherlock was dead. Whoever was standing on the other side of this door wasn't real.

Even if they were alive and breathing. Because Sherlock -

_hard to get that name wrapped around his mental tongue again without screaming_

- Sherlock was dead. Had been dead for quite a while now. So even if this man standing here with his hair in his eyes and a coat just like the one he died in -

_No pulse there is no pulse and he doesn't remember screaming, but he doesn't remembering _breathing_, either and it was all going to wash away soon and Sherlock would explain it of course he would..._

- even if there was the remotest possibility that he was, indeed, Sherlock (and not a random figment of madness come to solid, breathing life), it still wasn't Sherlock. Too much time had passed. He...he thought he had known him -

_Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please – would you do this for me?_

- but _that_ was the magic trick.

He hadn't really known him at all.

_'0.89 seconds._' He thought, registering the tick of a thousand things across The Man's face and the fact that it said too much and nothing at all - and he thought he had known that so well, but he hadn't had he? Now it was gone and he had just gotten used to the fact that there were two men in this relationship (could it be called that?) that he didn't know. _'0.89 seconds and this must have been what it was like._'

He thought all that, registered the emotional lack of emotions and felt...nothing.

"No." John Watson said very firmly.

And closed the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Warning, Author's Notes & Disclaimer(s): **_To be found at the __**First Part**_

* * *

**I Saw A Man Who Wasn't There**

* * *

He didn't slam the door.

There was no need to.

He just let it clicked closed on the impassive face of The Man, not really caring if he was surprised, if he was upset, if he was indifferent.

Door slamming was always more Sherlock's style anyway. Him and Harry both. Door slamming, windows rattling - incandescent, billowing rage that flew up from liquid statues that could move and it didn't matter anyway, did it? He was not a man prone to histrionics. Flaming rows. Snits.

He felt a smile twitch on his lips.

_You two have a little domestic?_

The smile died as quickly as it had formed.

The warmth of the wood dug into his forehead, pressed into the flesh - grounding, centering. He had to remind himself to breathe. That it was okay to do that, whether The Man on the other side of the door existed or not.

There had to come a point when you faced yourself and realized that madness was the only possible course. He had seen him Everywhere. Then he had Not. The next logical -

_rational, sensible, inevitable, not-impossible-mostly-probable_

- conclusion, would be for The Man to appear at his doorstep.

But he didn't have to invite him in. Even though he had essentially already done that. He did that a long time ago.

But he could still chose when the invite was accepted fully. When it was embraced.

It had been too long.

John was tired.

He breathed in the warm-dampness of his own exhalations against pressed wood and chipped paint, feeling his eyelashes squeeze and tangle, his fists clenched, doubled under his chin - holding the door closed and himself upright and wasn't that fitting, that The Man (his presence) could make him no longer able to stand. Of course, he wasn't able to stand when he had met the Shadow the Man was pretending to be. He wasn't able to stand after he...

He could stand now, but he no longer knew whose weight he was holding up.

He opened his eyes. He accepted his own weight. Reclaimed the air that wasn't folded in on itself. He grasped the knob.

'_No_.' He thought cleanly - but his hand (left) didn't obey, though his other hand (right), leaned against the frame, fingers ready to help him reclaim himself and keep the threshold sealed. Though which Threshold -

_the door, his mind, his soul_

- he was trying to protect, he didn't know anymore.

So his left hand disobeyed and he wrenched the door open rather more noisily than it had been shut.

There was no one there.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

So he closed it again.

And had another drink.


	3. Chapter 3

**Warning, Author's Notes & Disclaimer(s): **_To be found at the __**First Part**_

* * *

**He Wasn't There Again Today**

* * *

The hours stretch, sticky in a cold-warm way like a spider's web and he thinks slow and struggling within it.

The alcohol sits thick, heated and nauseating in his belly and as tension crawls and cramps his shoulders, he imagines it beating through his veins, filtering through his liver and kidneys. His bladder twinges in response, but he ignores it, wills it away with a fierceness that tastes like surprise behind his teeth.

It is 3am.

The shadows fit long and slender like fingers through the reaches of his flat, falling hollow and pale within the corners, dark meeting darkness and it clashes into a pool of empty beyond his sight.

There isn't/wasn't/hasn't been anyone at the door. Not for a couple of hours. Maybe there never had been.

His fingers had hovered over his phone, wanting to text the Shadow that had spilled so completely into his life before melting away in the pavement beneath his '_Oh God_' and '_Oh no_' and '_Sherlock_' – the startling presence of The Man at the door so _real_he thought maybe he could touch him through the lines of communication…

Then he remembered.

He stomach cramped, his bladder protested, but he sat in the absence of light in his furnished flat that wasn't home, counting the shadows within to eat at the memory of the Shadow without…and he waited.

He waited for the Shadow to appear again, willing the lack of illumination spilling from his windows to call it forth again – but whether he would punch it, kiss it, dismiss it, question, scream or start laughing madness into the serene nothingness of his neighborhood, he couldn't say.

His gun was warm-cold against his fingers, sweat layering into the deep grooves of the grip, seeping his essence into the metal in a way mere ownership never could. They were old friends, this gun and him.

The Browning was what he carried away from Afghanistan and it had almost carried him away (once) not too long after Sherlock spilled away into the ground and away from him.

It was warm-cold then, too, and he was thinking '_I had just found me, by losing whatever I was into _him_ and he has ripped me away from this world._'

He had thought '_Completeness, an end of an equation, the finis to a musical composition_' – wondering if the deep chuckle in the back of his mind that had been Sherlock and home and friendship was actually there, even as he knew Sherlock would have frowned on the sentiment of it all.

'_So _dramatic_, John._ ' He would have said, that frown bracketing his mouth, even as his hands would have risen to circumvent/punctuate his words. '_I do like the sense of finality, everything neatly rounded out – but the romanticism is wholly inappropriate and quite beside the _point.'

'_Exactly,_' John had thought, frowning himself as he had tucked his wartime friend under his jaw and –

His phone had buzzed.

Of all things, his phone had buzzed and he had a moment of '_Bugger it all_' and '_Oh,_ honestly' before picking it up and laughing even as tears that he chose to ignore streaked down his face, because of all people, it had been _Mycroft_.

Mycroft _Fucking _Holmes.

Of course.

The man who had quietly led Sherlock up to the ledge without even being there –

_his own brother and _'caring is not an advantage'_ and fake smile and sharp lapels and _'Tell him for me, would you?'

had just stopped John from completing the equation and really, even Mycroft might have been amused at that.

John had deleted the record of the call, turned off his phone and put the Browning back in a drawer in his new flat, ignoring it; the moment was over, the time was passed, the problem unsolved.

It would have been wrong, to do that in his new flat, anyway…but he couldn't/wouldn't/hadn't thought about doing this finish, this beginning of letting go in the biggest way possible at 221B. Mrs. Hudson would never had been able to rent it out again.

He drew no irony, no chuckle from the words or thoughts along those lines until days later: but the laughing had been more like crying and he stopped, afraid in a small way that he didn't dare to express.

The way he was thinking now, actually.

_Exactly _as he was thinking it.

The Dark hummed to itself contentedly – easily in the early am quiet. John thumbed the slanted grooves of the barrel in absent attentiveness, the pressure of blinking like an ache against his cheeks and he breathed in air that was stale from a living presence that hadn't really been alive except for eighteen months over nine months ago.

Nine months and he had yet to be reborn. Maybe madness was his birthing to his new place on the skin of this world, but he wasn't yet sure in that idea, and the liquid darkness curling in the corners beside his new/used fridge didn't yield any answers as he breathed (now unblinking) into the shifting light-shadows of his sparse living room.

He wasn't sure yet about a lot of things. He was unsure if he was still alive, though his heart beat as it always had and his lungs drew in and expelled air –

_Breathing is boring_

as they had always been designed to do and really, what was the fucking _point_ if you couldn't stop these things from happening? The human body was stupid in the fact that it struggled to survive even when such small things as points and understanding and contact were gone. It fought to survive even when the living was over and-and there should be a fucking _switch_–

His breathing had become labored and he fought to control it, the metal of the Browning creaking uneasily in his palm, against the crimp of his fingers. He breathed and tried to imagine Baker Street (221 B) the living room of their/his/Sherlock's flat sliding into the empty spaces of where he was now – a game he preferred to play when no Shadows burned their presence outside of his door and…and maybe he should just open it and let it come.

He thrilled at that thought – mouth dry with the possibility of opening the door and letting Madness walk in like it owned the place – but why _not_? It already was perfectly comfortable in the confines of his mind –

_honestly, it must be so _boring_ in your tiny little minds_

why not let it breathe in the same space that he couldn't breathe in?

John let the idea settle across the aching scream of his shoulders, the last three drinks he had singing in his blood and hammering at his bladder.

Then he stood up.

He put the Browning in his desk drawer, ignoring the dusty closed mouth of his laptop. He rolled the drawer closed, a scrape of sound too loud against the thudding in his ears and the whoosh of air in his lungs, and the still, still chuckling quiet of the shadows pooled in the empty darkness in the corners of this place that could never be, never has been Home.

Home bleed away after '_Stop it_' and '_No._' and he couldn't think beyond that anymore.

He hadn't been able to think beyond that in the nanoseconds it all happened in, if he was honest with himself – and he often was. It was an inherent character trait that had gotten him promoted in ranks and sighed at loudly by the one being who gave him reason, then tore it away with '_I'm a fake._'

His throat clicked drily as the fridge chuckled in black counterpoint to his thinking…his thinking that wasn't really thinking –

_You're an idiot…don't be like that, most everybody is_

and swiveled on one heel to face the Door.

The Man (the Shadow?) had burned him/itself against the wood, seeping into the disused spaces of a sad flat that had seen better days. The other side of the door would taste sharply of excitement and drama and horror and Alive. Because even though it wasn't (He wasn't) real, madness always tastes fresh in the wee hours before the day. Because it was as _inevitable_ as day coming to spill into night (before bleeding back to day again). Because the Browning (his old and faithful friend from War and war), just wasn't _enough_anymore.

John Watson let out a steady breath and with a hand that was also steady –

_You should fire her…_

he opened the door.


End file.
